Spa innovation hub loses affordable housing
SARATOGA SPRINGS – Plans to build 100 affordable apartments on South Broadway that supporters hoped would ease the city’s housing crisis are being scrapped because the developer did not win key federal and state aid needed to make the project financial viable.
Once built, the apartments slated for land where the Saratoga Diner once stood will all be priced at market value.
The Link@SoBro did not win its bid for state and federal tax credits that would have allowed it to build modestly priced apartments. Bill Teator of DEW Ventures, a managing member of the project, said loss of the potential tax credits left the mixed-use model “not a good competitive bid.” It will force Teator, the local partner with Indianapolis developer KCG Development, to look “for alternative way to finance the project.”
The Link@SoBro’s attempt to win tax credits was complicated by the fact that the $27 million, 130,000-square-foot building was designed to include more than just housing space. The developers planned to build work space and amenities at the complex to make it a place where young entrepreneurs “would live, work and play.”
To achieve that goal, which is still central to the project, the developers invited the Saratoga Economic Development Corporation’s Spark Saratoga to occupy the ground floor. They hope it will match entrepreneurs with mentors from fields such as finance, law and marketing.
The building is also expected to house Saratoga CoWorks, a café-like work sharing space.
“The economic development goal is the same,” Teator said. “The site is a great home base, highly trafficked, a live, work, play environment to retain and create the next generation of job creators.”
Teator has promised that he will reserve seven to 10 apartments for veterans and is working with Cheryl Hage-Perez, executive director of Veterans and Community Housing Coalition, on that effort.
Though disappointed about the loss of the affordable apartments in SoBro, Hage-Perez said progress is still being made to alleviate in the city’s affordable-housing crunch. Though she said the city is about 200 units shy of where it should be, 67 new apartments will be built on Allen Drive. Teator is also working that project. The new units will replace 38, one-story apartments built in the 1970s.
“It will make a nice dent into the need,” Hage-Perez said.
Teator said that project is eligible for federal tax credits because the homes are designed to be affordable for those earning 60 percent of the area’s median income, which Teator said is about $84,000 a year.
In addition to Allen Drive, Intrada on Washington Street and West Avenue will have 157 affordable units and more housing units are expected to be built by the Saratoga Springs Housing Authority.
“If these projects get approved by the state, that will give us a good chunk of what we need,” Hage-Perez said.
The loss of affordable units at SoBro will also require a renegotiation of a city-approved 30-year payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement, Teator said. He said he has alerted the city and is waiting for a response.